After Tehran

by Marina Nemat

  On October 29, 2008, I had an appointment with Dr. Donald Payne. I was very excited about meeting him. Since 1979, Dr. Payne has assessed and treated more than fourteen hundred victims of torture or war. He has testified at refugee determination hearings, has provided in-service training to members of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, and has made presentations and written articles on torture and the treatment of torture victims.

  Dr. Payne greeted me warmly in his office. I’m not quite sure what I had expected a psychiatrist who had worked with hundreds of torture victims to look like, but the man in front of me was like someone’s favourite uncle or a gentle grandfather one would meet at the park with a young child, a kind and simple man who has lived an average life. However, I knew that Dr. Payne’s life could never be described as “average.”

  Dr. Payne invited me to sit down. I got straight to the point and asked him if he believed that torture affected teenagers differently from adults.

  “There are so many factors here,” he said. “Younger victims are more vulnerable, but they’re also more resilient in some ways. Older people don’t have much life ahead of them, and it’s harder for them to begin a new life after a traumatic experience, but those who are in their late teens still have a future.”

  “What if the victim is fifteen or sixteen years old?” I asked.

  “This can be very difficult, but it also depends on the young person’s level of development and maturity. For example, an overprotected sixteen-year-old kid who’s arrested because of a family member can feel completely devastated.”

  I explained that in Iran, thousands of teenagers were arrested in the 1980s because they had read certain books or newspapers, had pamphlets of illegal political groups in their backpacks, or had gone to protest rallies. They weren’t exactly what could be considered “political.” They didn’t have the ideological or practical background to support them through torture. Older prisoners strongly believed in a certain ideology, but most of the young ones didn’t. They rarely got angry at the guards and interrogators who hurt them. Instead, they blamed themselves and became shameful and withdrawn.

  Dr. Payne agreed that self-blame was common in young victims, whereas the older prisoners who were politically involved had a strong sense of commitment that was like a religion to them and had become a part of their persona. If adults break under torture, they lose a part of who they are. However, this is not true for teenagers; ideology and political commitment are not fundamentally a part of them.

  I talked about the silence surrounding political prisoners, and Dr. Payne told me about one of his young patients who had been in prison for four years. Later, she escaped and came to Canada. She didn’t want to talk about her experiences with her friends because she wanted to be like everyone else, but she was aware that her not sharing her past with anyone affected her relationships and made them shallow. Her friends had no idea who she really was—but she wasn’t ready to tell. Dr. Payne gave me another example of a husband and wife from Argentina. The husband had been detained and tortured. After his release, he left the country with his wife and they had children, but he didn’t want the children to have any knowledge of his past; his wife, however, believed that it was important for them to know the truth. Dr. Payne also reminded me that many Second World War veterans never spoke about their experiences of war.

  I explained that many Iranians, including me, were consumed with getting rid of the current regime in Iran, but the problem was that no one had a clear idea what would replace it. Thirty years ago we had a revolution whose results were catastrophic. We wanted democracy, so we deposed the shah and brought Khomeini into power—and one dictatorship replaced another. I disagree with those who say things cannot get worse. Neither Marxism nor Marxist-Islamism nor any other ideology can bring democracy to Iran. Like the Islamic regime, they have proven that they have no tolerance for those who think differently. We, the Iranian people, are suffering from some form of traumatic stress disorder. I believe that the same way an individual can suffer from it, so can a country as a whole. We Iranians lived through the terrible 1980s: not only were we at war with Iraq and people were dying in cities as a result of Scud-missile attacks or young soldiers were being killed at the front, but thousands of teenagers, boys and girls, were being tortured and executed in prisons. We were a nation destructing from the inside and the outside, and our cemeteries were getting bigger and bigger.

  After the war, people talked about its horrors. This dialogue could take place because the war had been a collective experience: we had been attacked and we had fought for our sovereignty. But the suffering of political prisoners was never publicly discussed—at least, not until the unrest that followed the 2009 presidential election in Iran. Yet even then, the discussions were limited. To openly bring up the issue of torture is, of course, painfully difficult. In homes during private get-togethers, no one ever talked about prisoners. It was as though the country was suffering from some form of collective amnesia. Before the unrest of 2009, members of a few political groups in exile in the West wrote about the horrors of Iran’s political prisons, but their publications had tiny print runs. Most Iranians chose to look the other way and ignore the situation altogether. The majority of ex-prisoners are still silent because they are traumatized. Even though torture has a political aspect, it is also terribly personal and isolates its victims. On the other hand, like my friends and family, “normal” people want the prison experience forgotten, as if it had never happened. Because not only do they wish to be safe from the pain of remembering atrocities, they also wish to avoid any responsibility associated with acknowledging that an atrocity like torture occurs. Someone might ask, “Where were you when it happened? Why didn’t you stop it?” No one likes facing tough questions like that.

  I told Dr. Payne that I feared for the young generation in Iran, the children born after the revolution. They have always lived a double life. The middle and the upper classes in the country are well educated, and their kids love Western music, movies, fashion, and technology, but the government constantly tells them the West is “evil.” The kids don’t care. They listen to Western music and they want to dress like Western pop-culture icons. In Tehran, more women enter universities than men. Many Iranians have satellite dishes, and they watch the latest foreign films. They connect to the West through the Internet, even though the government tries to control it. At home, most young people can listen to music, read all sorts of books, and watch movies, but when they go to school and are in public, they have to behave the way the government expects them to or they will be punished severely. Even very young children have adapted to this duality.

  I was trying to understand post-traumatic stress disorder, so I asked Dr. Payne about it: “Like the American soldiers who come home from Iraq, do many PTSD sufferers have a tendency to become violent?”

  “No,” he said. “Soldiers are trained to be violent. It’s their job. They’re supposed to kill, and they’re rewarded for killing, but once they return home, they can’t be violent anymore. Their violent behaviour is not a symptom of PTSD but a reaction to it. The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are usually quiet. They’re nightmares and flashbacks that refuse to let go.”

  “But can there be a gap?” I asked. “I mean, can an individual who has experienced extreme trauma begin having nightmares and flashbacks years after the event?”

  “Yes,” he said. “This is quite possible. Actually, it’s common.”

  I told Dr. Payne about how normal I had seemed for years—how I had been a dutiful wife, a good mother, and an attentive waitress. No one could have guessed anything was wrong with me.

  “Yes,” said Dr. Payne. “The false self.”

  He didn’t need to explain the concept; I had lived it. After the prison, I created a new “Marina,” a carefully constructed fictional character. She had never experienced torture, rape, and humiliation, and she was going to live happily and normally ever after.

  I
told Dr. Payne that I didn’t go to the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture when we first came to Canada because for a long time after we arrived, I was not at all ready to admit that I was a torture victim. He agreed that most victims didn’t go there, and noted that the main aim of the CCTV was to assist victims with their settlement issues—learning English and finding a job and proper housing—not give them psychiatric help.

  “It’s very difficult for victims of torture to trust anyone,” he told me, “except for those who were in prison with them and who share their experiences. I worked with a young woman for a while. One night I was driving her and a few others home, and she was the last one for me to drop off. I asked her what her address was, and she refused to give it to me. Even though I had been helping her for a while and she seemed to now trust me, she still didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell me her exact address and wanted to be let off at a corner.”

  I agreed that trust was a serious issue. Many ex–political prisoners from Iran don’t even trust one another. Even now, they carry with them the political disagreements that plagued them in prisons. I have heard that after my release from Evin, ideological conflicts between prisoners gradually became so severe that some prisoners boycotted the others. Supporters of different political groups refrained from speaking to one another in prisons. These divisions became quite destructive and drained a great deal of the prisoners’ energy.

  Dr. Payne—or Don, as I came to call him—and I remained in touch. We had lunch together a few times and talked about recovery from torture and trauma, good and evil in the world and in individuals, and God and religion. One day, Don surprised me by bringing me cookies he had baked himself. The cookies were moist and delicious and my favourite—oatmeal cranberry and chocolate chip. I enjoyed them so much I decided to try to bake more often, because nothing is more comforting than the scent of freshly baked cookies on a cold day. Don’s cookies made me think of all the things that gave me a sense of peace and happiness: books, rosaries, prayers, the sea, mountains, being close to Andre, my Prayer Rock, our cottage by the Caspian Sea … and my Barbie doll.

  As a child I had always wanted a Barbie, but my mother believed that dolls were a waste of money. I had only two dolls: one I called “Lucy,” after Lucy Pevensie, the youngest Pevensie child in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; my brother gave her to me as a Christmas gift when I was about nine. The other was a nameless one that my father’s closest friend, whom I called Uncle Partef, had brought for me when I was five. She was almost as tall as I was and wore a pink princess dress. I was scared of her, so I asked Bahboo to hide her in our basement.

  When I was twelve, a year before the revolution, I saved up some money and bought a Barbie, even though I was too old to play with her. She had brown hair and came dressed in a long blue dress and white high heels. I kept her on my bookshelf next to my favourite books. She made me smile.

  After the revolution, my Barbie became one of my sources of courage when female members of the Revolutionary Guard replaced our teachers. Our new nineteen-year-old principal stood by the entrance of the school every day, inspecting all of us to make sure that we were not wearing makeup and that our head scarf completely covered our hair. If she suspected that a student had makeup on, she would wash that student’s face in a bucket of dirty water. Every morning before leaving for school, I looked at my Barbie and promised myself that I would one day be as beautiful as she was without being afraid.

  After my release from prison I discovered that my mother had thrown out my Barbie. She had probably thought that a young woman who had been a political prisoner had no use for something as silly as a doll, but I missed her.

  Following the publication of Prisoner of Tehran, a friend gave me a Barbie for my birthday after I told her how badly I had wanted one as a child. My new Barbie is blond. She has blue eyes and a perfect smile and looks very pretty in her pink ballerina dress. She sits on my desk, keeping me company as I write. To me, she is a reminder of every child’s right to enjoy beautiful things without facing imprisonment, abuse, or torture.

  An Elastic Band

  for Making a Ponytail

  In February 2009, as I was working on this book and after I had found Jasmine’s name on a list of the executed, I began having flashbacks again. I had not had any since late 2004, and they caught me off guard. I had been writing seven hours a day, had at least two speaking engagements a week, had taken on too many projects, and my father was ill. As a result, I was emotionally and physically exhausted.

  After having flashbacks several days in a row, I decided to discuss them with Don, but he was away on holidays, so I waited impatiently, worried about my mental health. When I knew Don was back, I sent him an email, asking for advice, and he replied:

  Sorry to hear that you had such upsetting experiences. I have known people to have vivid flashbacks many years later when under stress. They are usually isolated incidents and related to general stress. One Argentine woman, more than twenty years after her detention and torture, reported that when she was under the stress of preparing for her PhD thesis defense, she had a flashback of her detention while she was teaching a class …

  I would agree that your flashbacks were related to your high stress level and being exhausted physically and emotionally … The intensity of the content of your book would also be a factor. You should get enough rest and try to cut down on some of your stress. Very much easier to say than to do, especially when some things get thrown at you without control over them.

  I hope and expect that they will not recur. If any do, accept that it is a flashback, rather than anything to be realistically afraid of, and that it will pass. Again easier to say than to do when you are feeling very fearful.

  Do not hold back in contacting me if it would be helpful.

  I felt much better after reading Don’s words. Being reminded that other people in the world had gone through experiences similar to mine helped me put things into perspective.

  One of the flashbacks that haunted me seemed benign at first, and its appearance puzzled me. The first few episodes were not exactly visual: I was gathering my hair into a ponytail without a mirror in front of me, so I couldn’t see myself, but I could feel my fingers going through my hair. Every time, my heart would race. The memory was upsetting, but I couldn’t place it. It was like a blurry, forgotten photo, without a past or a future and disconnected from the flow of time. Why would I be afraid of making a ponytail? I couldn’t sleep. Where was the memory coming from? The more I thought about it, the more it recurred. But I still couldn’t understand its meaning. I decided to do what Don had suggested: control my fear and tell myself that it was just a memory. Maybe if I wasn’t so terrified, I would discover its origin. I gradually remembered more and more. Slowly, I managed to see my surroundings. I was in a cell at 209 in Evin. I dug deeper, asking myself, “Do I hear anything? Do I see anyone?”

  “Tie your hair back,” Ali says. “I don’t want it to get in the way.” He is standing over me.

  My hands go toward my head and my fingers comb through my hair. I pull off the elastic that sits on my wrist like a bracelet, gather my hair, and make a ponytail. I close my eyes and tears fall down my face.

  The past has a way of catching up with us. No matter how fast we run, we cannot escape it. One of the reasons I finally confronted my past was that I needed to prove to myself it could not control me. The large gap between the day I was released from prison and the day I started to write created a buffer that helped me keep my balance as I travelled back in time. I began almost to believe that I was in charge and in complete control. What I sometimes forgot to bring into account was that nothing in this world is absolute. I had never considered the possibility that what had happened years earlier could come back to life and haunt me.

  In September 2009, I accepted a radio interview on a Persian-language station based in Canada. The host, whom I will call Setareh here, phoned me, and during our pre-interview talk, she told me that she
had not read my book because she feared it would be too upsetting for her, but she had watched my TV interviews and read articles about me. I told her that I understood how she felt, but I believed that we had to face our past in order to have a better future. She asked me if it would be okay for listeners to email their questions to her, and I said it was fine. The interview went well and I answered all the questions, which were similar to the ones I had been asked many times before. There was one odd comment from a woman who claimed that Prisoner of Tehran had been published in Canada by a small publisher first and then by Penguin, and that on page 19 of the first edition I had mentioned that my father’s name was Gholamreza and my mother’s Roghieh, which are very Muslim names. I couldn’t understand why she was making a false claim about my publisher, but I suspected that she somehow believed she had found some form of discrepancy in my work. I said that my book had been published in this country only by Penguin Canada and that I had never had another publisher here. Then I explained that during the time of Reza Shah when my grandparents obtained official identification papers for themselves and their children, Iranian citizens were not allowed to have foreign names, even if they were not Muslim. My parents’ names had never been a secret. After the interview, Setareh said that she had received many questions from her listeners, but there was not enough time for them all. I mentioned that people could post any other questions they had on my Facebook wall, and I would respond to them all.